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B yrgir pushed open the door to my bedroom and carried me through.

Setting me gently on the bed, he kissed me before going into the washroom and running the bath.

I watched him move about in a daze. On his way back out, he tugged open the curtains.

The light was fading and the sky was overcast now.

Little drops of rain began to plink against the windows as I struggled to stay awake.

Before I could slip into sleep, I pushed myself up from the bed and peeled off my clothes, letting them fall to the floor in a pile.

I hadn’t even changed from his shirt and El’s pants yet.

Byrgir returned from checking the tub and smiled when he saw me, his moss-green eyes glinting with mischief.

I smiled back, and noticed his physical reaction to my nakedness rise to considerable attention beneath his dark pants.

He stripped off his own clothes, black shirt and pants falling away to reveal broad shoulders, solid muscle, strong legs, and dark, wandering knotwork and rune tattoos.

Gods, he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

The strong ache of desire spread in my core.

“I slept in here while you were gone, you know,” he said.

“El let you?” I asked, teasingly.

He smiled, more than a hint of sadness in it. “The bed linens still smelled like you, for a while.”

The pain in his voice made my heart stumble in my chest, but he smiled at me.

He approached me slowly, as if savoring the sight, the moment, then bent and slipped his arms under me to carry me to the bathroom.

The large tub awaited us, steaming and inviting, and he stepped in, holding me tight to him.

His lips caressed mine as we were cradled by warmth.

The scent of lavender and chamomile rose from the water, lulling me deeper into relaxation.

But as my injured hip and feet dipped into the water, I inhaled sharply through my teeth and flinched at the burning of hot water on fresh wounds.

“My Little Lamb, you’re hurt! I’m sorry, how could I forget? Is it too hot?” he asked.

“No, it’s nice. It just stings the scratches. But this is the best I’ve felt in weeks.”

“Let me see,” he said, and stood me up in the tub so that he was seated beneath me.

He carefully unwrapped the bandage from around my waist and inspected where the spear had grazed me.

“We’ll give it a good clean and keep it wrapped.

I think it will heal just fine without stitches.

” He planted four slow, intentional kisses on the uninjured skin around the wound.

His beard tickled my thigh, and the spark he had ignited within me climbed to a demanding roar.

“Now your feet,” Byrgir commanded, and took my hands to help me down into the water. I leaned back against the edge of the tub, and he raised one foot carefully in his strong hands.

“How did you last through dinner with this? Hal, there are entire thorns in here!”

“I’m so tired I can barely feel it.”

“When was the last time you slept through the night?” he asked as he began to pull the tiny thorns of wild rose and thistle from my foot. He handled it like he would a small bird: Gently, as if he were afraid he would crush it.

“I don’t know. Weeks, I think.”

He said nothing, but his face folded in a mix of sadness and anger. He gently kissed my foot, then used his teeth to pull out a larger, particularly stubborn sliver of wood.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said thoughtfully, the weight of the memories already pressing down on me. “I don’t want it to hurt you too.”

“Your pain is my pain.” He kissed my foot again. “Your burden is my burden.” Another kiss on my toes. “I want to carry whatever you carry. Whatever it is, I can bear it.”

I watched his face carefully as he tended to my feet.

There was something else there with the sadness, something much heavier –– guilt.

I began to realize how much he had suffered while I was away.

How much he had likely blamed himself, wrongfully so, for losing me.

He wanted to bear this burden with me. Perhaps it would be a kind of penance to absolve himself.

So I told him all I could. I told him of the cell and its iron bars, of the wards that kept me blind and cut off from the flow of life, of the bland food and the stiff cot.

The High Priestess, and how she both tortured and comforted me.

Her threats and promises. And the dark voice that haunted me, taunted me.

Drove me to madness, toyed with my waking mind and manipulated my dreams. I told him of the vision of the fiendish fae to whom the voice belonged.

All the while I spoke he pulled thorns from my feet, kissing the wounds and bruises.

I hesitated to tell him the final details of the Dark One’s games with my mind.

I didn’t know if he would still want me after he knew, but I wanted there to be no secrets between us.

Nothing buried. And so, finally, I told him how the fae had brought me to his bed within my mind that night, what he had done with me, to me.

My hands shook and my stomach twisted with shame as I said it.

It had lodged itself within me like something rotten.

And speaking of it made it move, made it tear through my guts like a rusty blade.

It was nauseating, dredging that horrible thing from the depths of me and into the light.

Terrifying to witness it myself, worse still to show it to another.

Byrgir pulled me into his lap, holding me close as I told him, and when I was done, he kissed me deeply and cradled me in the water.

“I am so sorry, Hal. Truly. I should have come for you sooner.”

“You came as soon as you could.”

“Not soon enough.”

“Yes, soon enough. Just in time. I am here with you now. I survived.” I put my hands on his face and kissed him.

“You never should have suffered through what you did. Never. I would have torn that place apart for you, stone by stone. I used to dream of it. Every day, every night I dreamed of it. I would have ripped that place apart with my bare hands, would have killed every man and woman in that temple to get to you. I would have burned down the entire city, the entire world for you.” His voice was barely more than an animalistic growl.

“I know.” I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him close. “I know.”

“There were days I couldn’t take all their talking, their planning.

I could hardly be in those meetings. Without you here, knowing you were trapped somewhere, suffering.

That there was nothing I could do about it.

It… I went mad with it, Hal. Crow had to drag me from the Council meetings more than once.

He had to fight me, physically fight me, to stop me from going back in and screaming at them all to go fuck themselves.

El stopped me from going alone to Avanis to get you a few times. ”

There was nothing I could say to ease the pain in his voice. Tears began to slip down my cheeks.

“She begged me to be patient, to hang on. Told me the only way to get you back was to make sure we played it smart. And she was right. But gods, it killed me, Hal. It killed me. I still see it. Every time I close my eyes, I see them dragging you away. I can’t – I can’t forgive myself for that."

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said.

“I never should have gotten so far from you.”

“It was me that went too far from you, Byrgir. It happened so fast.”

“And it will never happen again.” He twisted his fingers gently into my hair, just above my neck, and pulled my head back so I could look at him.

His ocean-green eyes blazed with intensity behind tears, with promise.

“I will never lose you again. I’ll never leave you unprotected.

I swear it.” He said it with all the reverence of a holy vow.

He kissed me with such emotion I thought my body would ignite, float into ash on the surface of the bath. His hands wove around me, pulling me into him.

His touch was the water, a force as deep and unshakable as the ocean, washing me clean wherever his fingers wandered.

The memories of darkness, of pain and fear, dissolved beneath his hands, turning to salt on my skin and rinsing away.

Every caress purified me, rebuilt me. He touched me as if he revered every fractured piece of me.

And if he just kept touching me, kept holding me close like this, maybe I would not fall apart.

I leaned back, meeting his gaze again, and in his eyes I felt alive.

I had imagined this moment a thousand times in that cell.

I kept myself alive picturing what it would feel like to be held by him, to have him inside myself.

Even after everything the Dark One had tried to take from me––my power, my agency, my connection with my own body––miraculously, he had not ruined this.

I pulled Byrgir close and kissed him, and he answered, heated and insistent, neediness and desire suddenly consuming us both.

I felt him grow hard and thick beneath me.

I shifted to straddle him, his hands gripping my rear.

I slid down and ground against his cock, hungry for the hard, impressive length of him as he rubbed delicately, teasingly across me.

He pulled my hair again, tipping my head back, and kissed my neck, then moved tantalizingly down.

He lifted one hand to cup my breast, running his thumb over my nipple.

It peaked beneath his attention, and a deep, needy ache spread between my legs, reaching up into my core.

I ground myself against him harder, and groaned as he kissed down to my breasts.

He flicked his tongue across my nipple, then took it into his mouth and kissed it deeply.

I moaned, working my hips into his, made myself moan again.